Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
July 2022 73
T
here is a terrible war raging in Ukraine.
The UN Human Rights division
inUkrainesays it has received hundreds
of allegations of torture and ill-
treatment, including conflict-related
sexual violence.
But there are things happening all over the
world that are just as horrific, whether because of
the scale or because of the evil intent of an
aggressor, or both, that go under-reported in our
liberal US-centric media.
Afghanistan
At 19 years, the US combat mission in Afghanistan
which ended in ignominy last year was America’s
longest war. Afghanistan has gained an economic
crisis, 220,000 dead, and near starvation for half
of its population – including one million children.
Current US sanctions on Afghanistan are poised
to kill even more civilians than the war did:
hospitals are running without medicines and the
banking system has been paralysed so that aid
must be trucked in from neighbouring countries.
Yemen
The UN estimates that by the end of 2021, the
seven-year conflict in Yemen had causedover
377,000deaths, with 60% of them the result of
hunger, lack of healthcare and unsafe water. More
than 10,200 children are known to have been
killed or wounded as a direct result of the fighting.
The conflict, now subject to a fragile ceasefire,
is between the internationally recognised
Ukrine’s Mriupol thetre: 300 died
INTERNATIONAL
Ukraine
if you
want to
Ukraine is the victim of savage aggression;
but so are many other countries from Iraq
to Palestine to Yemen, though the truth is
suppressed because the aggressor is not Russia
but the US or its patsies
By Róisín O’Shea
Yemen: the US has supplied $850m of weapons to a Saudi-led coalition, trained pilots and
soldiers and even advised on the choice of targets, who are so often noncombatant that the UN
has termed it a “systematic and deliberate” targeting of civilians.
74 July 2022
Amiriyh shelter bombing
government, backed by a Saudi-led military
coalition, and Houthi rebels supported by Iran. It
would be impossible without US (and UK)
support. The US has supplied $850m of weapons,
trained pilots and soldiers and even advised on
the choice of targets, who are so often
noncombatant that the UN has termed it a
“systematic and deliberate” targeting of civilians.
They have done everything except send ground
troops – that is not a neutral position, it is the
position of partners in war.
There seem to be no lines the US are unwilling
to cross, even the weaponisation of aid. President
Donald Trump’s designation of the Houthi as
terrorists was a death sentence to the civilian
population because it stopped aid from entering
the country. Yemen imported 90% of its food
before the war began, so the disappearance of
aid has caused a predictable level of devastation.
80% of the population, 22 million people, depend
on aid. President Joe Biden now wants to reinstate
this designation.
Irq
The Iraq War (2003-2011), part of the ‘War on
Terror’ killed up to one million people. Kofi Annan,
thenSecretary-General of the United Nations,
called the invasion illegal under international
law, as it violated theUN Charter, yet there was
no investigation to assess whether war crimes
had been committed. In 1991 during the Gulf War,
the US Stealth-bombed Amiriyah shelter in Iraq,
killing 1500 civilians. Incinerated handprints of
some victims remain fused to the concrete ceiling
of the shelter to this day. Human Rights
Watchclaimed, “The United States’ failure to give
a warning before proceeding with the disastrous
attack on the Ameriyya shelter was a serious
violation of the laws of war”. Yet no western
media cried ‘war crimes’.
More recenly in Irq nd Syri
Following the capture of much of northern Iraq
and eastern Syria by the so-called Islamic State
– and atrocities committed by the terror group
against local populations – an international
Coalition led by the United States began military
actions against Islamic State in 2014, in
partnership with local forces. It has acknowledged
killing at least 1,417 civilians in air strikes in Iraq
and Syria since 2014. But monitoring group
Airwars believesthe actual figure is up to 13,244.
A 2022 US military investigation found that
troops did not violate the laws of war or
deliberately cause civilian casualties in an air
strike in Syria in 2019 that killed dozens of
people. The probe was launched in response to
a New York Times report which accused the
military of a cover-up over the attack.
Ehiopi
Researchers from Belgium’s Ghent University
estimate as many as half a million people have
died so far in Ethiopia’s Civil War, described by
the Washington Post as the world’s “deadliest
war”:between 50,000 and 100,000 from the
fighting, 150,000 to 200,000 from starvation and
more than 100,000 from lack of medical
attention. The conflict in Ethiopia has been
falsely characterised as an oppressive
government denying a marginalised community
the right to an election. The narrative feeds into
the stereotype of corrupt and incompetent
African governments, a myth easily exposed if
Ethiopian citizens and journalists were consulted
by Western media.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is a
small, elite group of ousted leaders trying to
intimidate and overhaul a democratically elected
government, forcing a leader on millions of
compatriots. TPLF had their time: they were in
power for 30 years but are supported by the US.
More than 260 Palestinians were killed in the
Gaza Strip during the May 2021 escalation of
hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed
groups, according to the UN Oce for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Aairs. Rocket
attacks by Palestinian armed groups were met by
a disproportionate Israeli response involving
military attack from the air and the sea, in
addition to shelling — in breach of the rules of war
on self-defence. Numerous UN resolutions
including UN Security Council resolutions in
1979, 1980,and 2016 and prevailing international
opinion, hold that Israeli settlements in theWest
Bank,East Jerusalemand theGolan Heightsare
in violation of international law. But the US
provides it with blind political and military
support. In 2020, the US gave $3.8bn (£2.7bn) in
aid to Israel - part of a long-term, yearly
commitment made under the Obama
administration. Almost all of this aid was for
military assistance and came as part of an
agreement signed by former president Barack
Obama in 2016 for$38bn (26.8bn) in military aid
over the decade 2017-2028.
Russia’s oensive in Ukraine, which has
targeted civilians including in attacks on shelters
and the attack on Mariupol hospital has
justifiably been deemed war crimes by Western
media and politicians and the International
Criminal Court sent a 42-member team, the
largest it has ever sent, to probe alleged war
crimes in Ukraine. However, it is a blinding double
standard that the US commits equal atrocities
without so much as a slap on the wrist. The ICC
has no remit over the US.
According to Necrometrics,around 500,000
people have been killed in Somalia since the start
of the civil war there in 1991. In June, the
Norwegian Refugee Council declared the
situation in the DRC as the world’smost neglected
refugee crisis– for a second year running. At least
five million people are internally displaced and
one million more fleeing abroad, the aid group
said.
In a recent poll conducted by the Guardian,
nearly 80% of Britons were unaware of the
malnutrition crisis in the Horn of Africa. (Only 9%
were unaware of the war in Ukraine.)
The basis of this famine is three successive
failed rain seasons, exacerbated by rising food
prices and armed conflict in many of the aected
countries. The war in Ukraine only stands to
worsen the situation further, as it is a source of
staples like wheat and sunflower oil.
20 million people across the Horn of Africa and
40% of the population of Somalia, the country
most aected, are facing starvation. Michael D
Higgins has referred to this famine as “the
greatest humanitarian crisis since the Second
World War”, and begged of Irish media not to
avert their gaze.
There is an unmistakable pattern of our media
overlooking faraway conflicts or underplaying
the role of US militarism in creating or sustaining
them. We all respect the ubiquitous Ukrainian
flag but who would even recognise an Iraqi,
Syrian, Congolese, or Somalian one?
